Follow These Rules To Avail Free Credit Reports

By Faye MergelPublished: Saturday, May 1st, 2010

Free credit reports might actually be effective after the coming Friday. The commission for federal trade decided to reduce advertisements that were misleading and made it a compulsory requirement for the companies that do offer free reports to state that there is just one site to get them.

These rules being new were looked upon after last years reform bill for credit cards. This is now targeted at advertisements online, the TV and radios. Many consumers were deceived into paying unnecessary prices that they didn’t even know about. Some people wonder why they pay costs even though they are offered free reports .

It is usually because they didn’t sign out of their trial membership or didn’t read the print wisely.

According to the federal law that was stated in 2003, the consumers should receive at least one credit report for free from the three agencies-Transunion, Equifax and Experian. The reports contain your credit records, the payments made and debt details.

One of the agencies that are affected by these rules, whose pitchman is a young guitar strummer and a rock star whose credit scores are posted as a part of TV advertisements that are just for laughs, have surprisingly attracted a lot of fans on facebook and youtube.

Freecreditreport.com which is owned by Experian was made to pay a fine of 1.2 million dollars and was also ordered to refund amounts to customers who asked for their free reports but ended up paying costs that were unwanted. This took place in the year 2005 and also in the year 2007.

The ads that were published and posted mentioned that the customer’s credit cards wouldn’t be used for charges during the trial period. But they didn’t let the customers know that they would be charged $79.95 for an annual membership automatically. This membership re-billed automatically unless it was stopped within 30 days.

These advertisements were being banned from popping up, especially from these three companies, which people said were causing confusion and provided vague information.

The consumers were confused by the several offers that popped up covering up every activity of the main page.

The consumers aren’t supposed to open an account just to get a free report. George said it was just a way to remove obstructions to those consumers who did get free reports.